


Ficlet: A Promise

by Jacqueline Albright-Beckett (xaandria)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Romance, date, proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 14:52:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8494189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xaandria/pseuds/Jacqueline%20Albright-Beckett





	

Cas seems nervous tonight.

He covers it well, but Dean has seen every corner of him, examined every minute shade of his moods, and he is nervous. It’s in the way he keeps sipping at his water during the meal, the way he stands up from his chair when they are done.

They’re walking to the car when Cas slips his hand into Dean’s. Dean glances over in mild surprise; Cas is not much one for public displays of affection. The smile that Cas returns is a little flustered.

“Okay, what’s up?” Dean asks, stopping them on the sidewalk.

“Nothing,” Cas says innocently. Too innocently. Dean snorts.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Really,” Cas insists. “Let’s just - let’s keep walking. It’s a nice night.”

And that is more suspicious than anything else; not that Cas wants to keep walking, because it is a nice night, but that he would suggest it as if it were something they wouldn’t normally do anyway. And he’s still holding Dean’s hand. Dean raises an eyebrow and decides to go with it.

He expects Cas to stay silent. The silences between them have never been uncomfortable; they had always felt like a tiny world of their own, an envelope in the world of chaos that they alone shared. So Dean is surprised again when Cas suddenly takes a breath.

“I swear I’ve done research,” he says, pausing by the railing of a riverside scenic point on the opposite side of an ice cream shop, windows dark as it waited for tomorrow. “And this is supposed to be done someplace significant.” He swallows, and Dean’s suspicion at Cas’s behavior is replaced by a strange, unreal sensation of entering into an important moment. “But - well, everywhere I’ve gone with you has been significant. Because it’s been with you.” Cas turned to look at their surroundings. “This is a good place, though.”

Dean licked his lips. “I accidentally said I loved you here.”

The nervous grin on Cas’s face lit it up like the sun emerging from behind a cloud. “I know. Right at this spot.” The smile didn’t disappear, exactly, but it became slightly stiffer as whatever was making Cas nervous returned to his thoughts. “I wouldn’t ever ask this of you if I didn’t mean it,” he said suddenly, and now the smile was gone entirely, Cas looked very seriously into Dean’s face, chin tilted up slightly. “Really mean it. And - it means a little more than what it sounds like in the traditional words, but there aren’t really words for my particular situation.”

He grinned again, with a little exhalation that was meant to be a laugh, and dropped down and knelt on the sidewalk. “I’m also supposed to do this.”

Dean blinks, a sudden shot of adrenaline thrumming through him as Cas reached up to take Dean’s hand in one of his, the other pulling a box from his pocket. “Holy shit,” he blurts without thinking.

Cas laughs, bowing his head and shaking it before lifting his face to look up at Dean again. “Dean. Dean Winchester. I want to spend my life with you. Grow old with you. I assume we’d do that anyway, but - I’d like to promise you that I’ll do it.” He flips open the top of the box, and Dean can see the glint of metal in it. “Will you marry me?”

Dean cannot hold back the laugh that has been bubbling at the back of his throat since he realized what Cas was about to do, and it bursts from him in such force that he drops to his knees on the sidewalk as well. Or, at least, that’s what he hopes it looks like to Cas as he draws a box from his own pocket.

“You beat me to the punch,” Dean says, swallowing hard against the tears that have begun to stand in his eyes - from the laughing, he tells himself, not because he’s a sentimental sop. “I was gonna ask you when we got to the car.” He chuckled as he opened the box. “I even had a little speech. Wasn’t as nice as yours, though.”

Cas looks at the ring in Dean’s box in amazement. “I take it you accept my offer, then?” He looks up, a ridiculous, goofy grin spreading across his face.

“Do you accept mine? Will you marry me?” Dean offers Cas the box.

“Of course.”

“Then yes.”

Dean doesn’t pay attention to the way his knees are beginning to ache against the concrete; he reaches forward and draws Cas against him, opting to press their hearts together in a hug rather than kiss him - for now.

There are still people walking past on the sidewalk; Dean can tell that they are being stared at, comprehension dawning as the onlookers see what they are holding in their hands, and he knows they are drawing smiles from their audience. He shuts his eyes and pulls Cas closer. The words have been said, and now their envelope of quiet isolates them from the world of chaos around them.


End file.
